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December 2010 Airline System Traffic Up 2.9 Percent from December 2009

December 2010 Airline System Traffic Up 2.9 Percent from December 2009

Thursday, March 10, 2011 - The U.S.
Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) today
reported in a release of preliminary data that U.S. airlines carried 58.6
million scheduled domestic and international passengers in December 2010. This is a 2.9 percent increase from December 2009 (Table
1). The December 2010 passenger total
was 2.1 percent above that of two years ago in December 2008 but still remained
3.6 percent below the pre-recession level of 60.8 million in December 2007
(Table 2).

BTS, a part of DOT's Research and
Innovative Technology Administration, also reported that U.S. airlines carried 2.6
percent more domestic passengers in December 2010 than in December 2009. The
number of international passengers on U.S. carriers in December 2010 increased 4.8
percent over December 2009 (Tables 7, 13). The December 2010 load factors of 80.7
percent systemwide and 80.8 percent domestic were the
highest recorded for any December (Tables 1, 7).

Additional traffic numbers can be
found on the BTS website in the Airline
Industry box. Click on a link in the
column on the right. For more historic numbers, see Traffic on the BTS website.

For the full
year 2010, the number of scheduled domestic and international passengers
on U.S. airlines increased 2.4 percent from 2009 to 720.4 million. The number
of passengers declined 3.1 percent from the full year 2008 to the full year 2010
(Table 2).

U.S. airlines carried 1.9 percent more
domestic passengers and 5.9 percent more international passengers in the full
year 2010 than in 2009 (Tables 7, 13).

Top Airlines in December

In December, Southwest Airlines carried more total system and
domestic passengers than any other U.S. airline (Tables 4, 10). American Airlines
carried the most international passengers (Table 16).

Delta Air Lines, following its merger with Northwest
Airlines, carried more total system passengers in 2010 than any other U.S. airline for the first
time since 2001 (Table 3) Southwest carried the most passengers during the previous
three years. Southwest carried more domestic passengers in 2010 than any
other U.S. airline for the seventh consecutive year (Table 9). Delta
carried more international passengers in 2010 than any other U.S. carrier after
American had carried the most for 20 consecutive years (Table 15).

Top Airports in December

In December,
more total system and domestic passengers boarded planes at Atlanta
Hartsfield-Jackson International than at any other U.S. airport (Tables 6 and
12); and more international passengers boarded U.S. carriers at Miami than at
any other U.S. airport (Table 18).

More total system and domestic passengers boarded planes in
2010 at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International than at any other U.S. airport
for the 15th consecutive year (Tables 5 and 11); and more international
passengers boarded U.S. carriers at Miami International than at any other U.S.
airport for the 16th consecutive year (Table 17).

Flights Operated

In December, U.S. airlines operated 767,500
scheduled domestic and international flights, down 0.3 percent from the number
of flights operated in December 2009 (Table 1). The number of domestic flights decreased
0.5 percent in December from a year earlier while international flights were up
1.6 percent (Tables 7, 13).

During the year 2010, U.S. carriers
operated 9.5 million domestic and international flights, 0.5 percent fewer than
were operated during 2009 (Table 1). Domestic flights decreased 0.8 percent from the previous year while
international flights were up 2.8 percent (Tables 7, 13).

For other
comparisons from the full year 2009 to 2010 and from December 2009 to December
2010, see the following tables:

Airport Rankings

Scheduled
International Air Travel on U.S. Airlines (Tables 13-18)

Table 13 (December
and January through December):
International revenue passenger-miles on U.S. airlines (RPMs)
International available seat-miles on U.S. airlines (ASMs)
International passenger load factor on U.S. airlines
International flight stage length on U.S. airlines
International passenger trip length on U.S. airlines

Table 14
International scheduled enplanements on U.S. airlines by
month since January 2008

Airline Rankings

Table 15
January through December: Top 10 U.S. airlines by scheduled
international passenger enplanements

Table 16
December: Top 10 U.S. airlines by scheduled international
passenger enplanements

Airport Rankings

Table 17
January through December: Top 10 airports by scheduled
international passenger enplanements on U.S. airlines

Table 18
December: Top 10 airports by scheduled international
passenger enplanements on U.S. airlines

Reporting Notes

Data
are compiled from monthly reports filed with BTS by commercial U.S. air carriers detailing operations, passenger traffic and freight traffic. This
release includes data received by BTS from 82 carriers as of March 3 for U.S.
carrier scheduled civilian operations. Go to http://www.transtats.bts.gov/releaseinfo.asp for the complete list of reporting and non-reporting carriers. U.S. carriers ' foreign point-to-point
flights are included in system and
international totals. To create a customized table for passengers,
flights, RPMs, ASMs and other data, including non-scheduled service, go to http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_information/air_carrier_traffic_statistics/.

Traffic numbers are available on
the BTS website at TranStats, the Intermodal Transportation Database, at http://transtats.bts.gov. Click on Aviation. For system passengers, RPMs and ASMs by
carrier through December, click on Air Carrier Summary Data (Form 41 and 298C
Summary Data), and then click on Schedule T-1. Use crosstabs to find
scheduled service.

For domestic numbers through December
and international numbers through September by origin as well as by carrier,
after clicking on Aviation, click on Air Carrier Statistics (Form 41
Traffic). Click on T-100 Market for
system passenger numbers, T-100 Domestic Market for domestic or T-100
International Market for international. For flights, stage length and trip length, use the appropriate T-100
Segment database. Use crosstabs to find scheduled service.

TranStats system and international totals do not include U.S. carriers' foreign point-to-point flights. For December, U.S. carriers reported 235,285 foreign point-to-point
passengers. For January through December, U.S.
carriers reported 2,751,453 foreign point-to-point passengers.

Data are subject to revision. BTS
has scheduled April 14 for the release of January traffic data.

Table 1: Scheduled System (Domestic and International)
Airline Travel on U.S. Airlines

** Delta's January-December
2010 number is the report of the merged Delta and Northwest. The January-December 2009 numbers were
reported separately by Delta and Northwest. Northwest reported 40.865 million
system passengers in January-December 2009.

** Delta's
December 2010 number is the report of the merged Delta and Northwest. The December 2009 numbers were reported
separately by Delta and Northwest. Northwest reported 3.041 million system
passengers in December 2009.

* Delta's
January-December 2010 number is the report of the merged Delta and
Northwest. The January-December 2009
numbers were reported separately by Delta and Northwest. Northwest reported
32.532 million domestic passengers in January-December 2009.

* Delta's
December 2010 number is the report of the merged Delta and Northwest. The December 2009 numbers were reported
separately by Delta and Northwest. Northwest reported 2.426 million domestic
passengers in December 2009.

* Delta's
January-December 2010 number is the report of the merged Delta and
Northwest. The January-December 2009
numbers were reported separately by Delta and Northwest. Northwest reported
8,333.1 thousand international passengers in January-December 2009.

* Delta's
December 2010 number is the report of the merged Delta and Northwest. The December 2009 numbers were reported
separately by Delta and Northwest. Northwest reported 614.7 thousand
international passengers in December 2009.